Face to face with the spot, Tom felt a flickering of interest. He listened with attention while Honey explained how the baby carriage had for the last time been lifted down by two footmen, and how it was wheeled away by the nurse.
"Nash, her name was. I seen her come out one day, when Goody and me was standin' 'ere. Nice little thing she seemed, English, same as I be. Yes, Goody and me'd sniggle and snaggle ourselves every which way to see how we could cook up a yarn that'd ketch on to some o' that money. We sure did read the papers them days! There wasn't nothink about the Whitelaw baby what we didn't know. Now, if yer've looked long enough at the 'ouse, Kid, I'll show yer somethink else."
They went into the Park by the same little opening through which the Whitelaw baby had passed, not to return. Like a detective reconstructing the action of a crime, he followed the path Miss Nash had taken, almost finding the marks of the wheels in the gravel. Going round the shoulder of a little hill, they came to a fan-shaped elm, in the shade of which there was a seat. Beyond the seat was a clump of lilac, so grouped as to have a hollow like a horseshoe in its heart, with a second seat close by. Honey revived the scene as if he had witnessed it. Miss Nash had sat here; her baby carriage had stood there. The other nurse, name o' Miss Messenger, had put her baby beneath the elm, and taken her seat where she could watch it. All he was obliged to leave out was the actual exchange of the image for the baby, which remained a mystery.
"This 'ere laylock bush ain't the same what was growin' 'ere then. That one was picked down, branch by branch, and carried off for tokens. Had a sprig of it meself at one time. I always thinks them little memoriums is instructive. I recolleck there was a man 'anged in Liverpool, and the 'angman, a friend of my guv'nor's, give me a bit of the chap's shirt, what he'd left in his cell when he changed to a clean one to be 'anged in. Well, I kep' that bit o' shirt for years. Always reminded me not to murder no one. Wish I had it now. Funny it'd be, wouldn't it, if you turned out to be the Whitelaw baby? He'd a' been just about your age."
Tom threw himself sprawling on the seat where Miss Nash had read Juliet Allingham's Sin, and laughed lazily. "I couldn't be, because his name was Harry, and mine's Tom."
"Oh, a little thing like that wouldn't invidiate your claim."
"But I haven't got a claim. You don't suppose my mother stole me, do you? That's the very thing she used to tell me not to...."
The laugh died on his lips. As Honey stood looking down at him there was a light in his blue-gray eye like the striking of a match. Tom knew that the same thought was in both their minds. Why should a woman have uttered such a warning if she had not been afraid of a suspicion? A flush that not only reddened his tanned cheeks, but mounted to the roots of his bushy, horizontal eyebrows, made him angry with himself. He sprang to his feet.
"Look here, Honey! Aren't there animals in this Park? Let's go and find them."